Sony Ericsson has confirmed that it has no plans to make more handsets based on Symbian, which shouldn't surprise anyone but is still bad news for the dominant smartphone OS.
Sony Ericsson did make some nice Symbian handsets in its time, but had clearly moved over to Android along with most of the industry (Nokia excepted), so …

COMMENTS

Pity,

I was weighing up getting a Vivaz or an X10 earlier this year- I went with the Vivaz mainly because of SE's continuing support of Symbian and a hope for a ^3 or ^4 handset. Looks like I made the wrong choice.

Windows 7 Phone

While I'm no fan of Microsoft, too many people seem to have given up on them in the smartphone arena. But Microsoft knows that they must expand beyond the desktop, and they have a large amount of cash so they can afford to make a long term effort. I don't think that smartphone OS's have the same sort of "lock in" that desktop OS's have, so Microsoft still has a large window :) of opportunity left.

They remain a member of the Symbian Foundation

Skipping Symbian^3 is a sensible move, it's a transitional release until the big changes come in Symbian^4 due in H1 2011. For most vendors it's not worth investing the time/money on Symbian^3 releases, let's see if SE reconsider their decision once Symbian^4 ships - I wouldn't be surprised if they do.

SE are making virtually no money out of Android and are steadily losing market share having got fully behind Android - it's a losing proposition as the cheap and nimble Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers eat away what profit remains in Android hardware.

Symbian^4 may well be the saviour of SE, because Android certainly isn't.

smartphone functionality at feature phone prices?

Fail

The Android pool is swimming with sharks and SE's phones have been very disappointing for a long time. There's no way they're going to win any wars in this segment unless there's a massive change.

Competing with just Nokia, Samsung and possibly LG (there've been rumours about them revisiting symbian) would be a lot easier, particularly with what looks like will be a resurgent symbian when SF^3 and then more importantly SF^4 hit.

SE sucks

They made such a big deal about Satio but what a shame. They dont even bother with firmware upgrades. The least they could have done was give away Symbain 3 or Android to port onto Satio, which in my opinion, hardwarewise, is the best and was their flagship phone.

I will never buy another SE handset again until the day I die

The P910 was a great phone and one of my favourite 'til this day.

When that phone was stolen I then bought a P990 sim-free. It cost me a considerable sum of money at the time Alas it was woefully under-specced for the o/s and full of bugs due to it not having been properly developed. SE promptly dropped support for the phone, failed to deliver upgrades to sort the bugs in it and basically abandoned me and other users.

The dreaded P990

I used to work for Symbian and when I started the company game me my first phone. It was the aforementioned Sony Ericsson P990i and what a pile of junk it was. It was under-developed in almost every area and it did nothing well. Even making calls was a nightmare.

Give up on Microsoft in the phone arena

@fishman, I don't know if people have given up on Microsoft in the phone market, period. But the fact of the matter is, Windows Mobile 6.5 is a dead end, and really is showing it's antiquated roots. Windows Phone 7 is simply not compelling, it's not a matter of "giving up", this is simply a market where Microsoft has to actually compete and their product is apparently not competitive. I know based on specs, reviews, videos & photos it didn't grab my interest in the slightest. I don't really care how much money they are willing to spend or how long they are willing to stay in the market, I care about results. I'd like to add at this point, they are the king of vaporware, so I'm sure if Windows Phone 7 doesn't do well they'll talk almost immediately about how great Windows Phone 8 and how it'll be out Real Soon Now(tm); they have dropped features on, cancelled, or altered beyond recognition, so many projects that I will believe it when I see it. Anything radically new they came out with surely take at least a year or two though, so I suppose in the sort term I've given up on them.

Anyway.. I've never used a Symbian device, it seems like if it's still selling well it'd make sense to make a few more Symbian phones. But personally, I would get an Android phone over a Symbian phone.